Joseph Inguimberty (1898-1971) - Longshoremen In The Port Of La Joliette

Joseph Inguimberty (1898-1971)
Débardeurs sur la port de la Joliette
Black and white lithograph
Signed and numbered 30/80 lower right
46 x 56 cm

The Painter of Two Shores :

From Indochina to Provence Born in Marseille in 1896, Joseph Inguimberty left his hometown for Paris, where he studied at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs. In 1925, he answered Victor Tardieu’s call and moved to Hanoi to teach at the School of Fine Arts, where he played a key role for over twenty years in the emergence of modern Vietnamese art. Alongside Alix Aymé, he contributed to the revival of the traditional lacquer technique, which they adapted by skillfully blending Asian craftsmanship with Western influences.

World War II brought this long period in Indochina to an end. Returning to France in 1946, Inguimberty settled in Menton, his wife’s hometown, and rediscovered the landscapes of Provence, which he painted with a perspective profoundly transformed by his Asian experience. His works blend flat areas of color, serenity, and slender forms, creating a subtle fusion between the rice paddies of Tonkin and the lavender fields of Provence. Marseille, his hometown, remained a constant source of inspiration. He had already painted monumental scenes of dockworkers on the quays there in the 1920s, and he continued to explore its ports and calanques, remaining faithful to his practice of painting from life.

Despite a prolific career and regular exhibitions in Parisian galleries, he remains little known locally, even though he is now recognized in Vietnam as one of the major artists of his time.

In 2012, the Alexis Pentcheff Gallery in Marseille organized a major retrospective titled Le Sud de Joseph Inguimberty, bringing his work back into the spotlight in France. At the same time, the publication of the first catalogue raisonné, edited by Giulia Pentcheff in collaboration with the artist’s children, brought together the various facets of his work and revealed the profound unity of a career straddling two cultures, two worlds, and two forms of light.

Joseph Inguimberty thus created a singular body of work, at a crossroads, that transcends geographical and temporal boundaries. An art that is both rooted and floating, where painting becomes the site of an encounter between memories of elsewhere and familiar landscapes, between tradition and modernity.

Discover more works by this artist on the gallery’s website: https://www.galeriepentcheff.fr/fr/peintre-joseph-inguimberty